The International Channel of the MOFET Institute offers a range of programs and platforms for the benefit of the international community of teacher educators, teachers and professionals holding positions in education.

Researchers are discovering just how powerful an effect a good story can have on the brain, and not just in terms of entertainment. A memorable yarn can also help us retain important information, both in casual and formal learning settings.

Finding Materials: This site is designed for geography students and teachers to find interesting, current supplemental materials. To search for place-specific posts, browse this interactive map. To search for thematic posts, see http://geographyeducation.org/thematic/ (organized by the APHG curriculum). Also you can search for a keyword by clicking on the filter tab above.

"Photographer Christopher Herwig has covered more than 30,000 km by car, bike, bus and taxi in 13 countries discovering and documenting these unexpected treasures of modern art. From the shores of the Black Sea to the endless Kazakh steppe, the bus stops show the range of public art from the Soviet era and give a rare glimpse into the creative minds of the time."

A new way to observe and appreciate architecture and creativity from a different culture. I love the idea of the book to show how something so ordinary and overlooked in everyday society like a bus stop can be turned into works of art. It would be cool to see this inspire other artists to turn other modern day things into cool works of art. How awesome would this have been 20 years ago if they did things like this to phone booths?

This article is a collage of soviet bustops, which happen to be extravagant. Some of them are ancient looking made out of cement. Some have highly decorated sculptures of the sickle and hammer soviet sign. Others are large sheltered areas to protect citizens. By looking at the high scale of bustops, and large amount, it shows that the population must use a lot of bus transport. Some of these bustop are very nice looking, elegant, unique, or a distinct representation of Russian History. It is unique to see a different spin on a Bustop, something that seems so repetitive at Kennedy Plaza here in Providence.

for as monstrous as the soviet union was, they did care about appearances and the safety of their people. these bus stops show some of the wonderful aspects of soviet architecture. in addition, you can see bus stops in the middle of nowhere. this is the same mindset that made the soviets build nuclear shelters for the majority of their populace.

Even the most confident of native speakers can sometimes have doubts about their spelling and grammar. As for learners of English, getting their writing to a really high degree of proficiency can be a real challenge. It’s great to have a friend to turn to in moments of doubt or better still someone who will proof read your work and give you a second opinion, but if you don’t have that luxury then the Grammarly plagiarism checker is probably the next best thing.

This is a critical phase for Open Educational Resources (OER) movement: on one side the number of OER is increasing rapidly, and on other side debates about quality of OER-based courseware are heating up. These debates emanate from the fact that OER-based courseware are supposed to help users to follow a logical learning path and get an engaging, interactive, and enjoyable learning experience. There are two aspects of quality assurance in OER-based courseware: content and pedagogy. The content aspect primarily rests with subject experts, and pedagogical quality of courseware mainly lies in the hands of developers. Present trends reveal that mainly enthusiasts, working with some support from the institution management are designing and developing OER-based courseware. There seems a possibility that these enthusiasts are developing courseware without undergoing any specific courseware development training, and in the absence of proper knowledge and training about pedagogy, one can not be sure that the produced courseware will be of superior quality. In this backdrop, present paper discusses and details about a number of guiding principles for enrichment of pedagogical quality in OER-based courseware

Technology that increases rigor promotes higher order thinking, not rote level tasks. There are times it is appropriate to do lower level tasks, but they should build to higher levels of thinking. In other words, look for technology that is more than a basic worksheet on the screen.

In this talk, Sugata Mitra will take us through the origins of schooling as we know it, to the dematerialisation of institutions as we know them. Thirteen years of experiments in children's education takes us through a series of startling results – children can self-organise their own learning, they can achieve educational objectives on their own, they can read by themselves. Finally, the most startling of them all: groups of children with access to the internet can learn anything by themselves. From the slums of India, to the villages of India and Cambodia, to poor schools in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, the USA and Italy, to the schools of Gateshead and the rich international schools of Washington and Hong Kong, Sugata's experimental results show a strange new future for learning.

Finding Materials: This site is designed for geography students and teachers to find interesting, current supplemental materials. To search for place-specific posts, browse this interactive map. To search for thematic posts, see http://geographyeducation.org/thematic/ (organized by the APHG curriculum). Also you can search for a keyword by clicking on the filter tab above.

Dear “Nervous To Try Something New With EdTech”: You know when you spoke with me the other day and told me that that introducing more tech into my class was fine for me because I was ‘into it’ and ‘understood’ it? That you were not going to try a new way of doing things (edtech-wise) …

I've done edtech training for nervous teachers since the days of the Apple ll and the Commodore 64. Some things never change. I think it's not so much the fear of tech as it is the fear of losing control of a class when the tech fails (as it always will).

The cure? Perhaps being flexible enough to have multiple fall back positions when the tech crashes and accepting the role of teacher as learner as you learn the ropes along with your students.

Some good insights shared here on the best options to employ when presenting. An amateur, it is said, when asked to speak, first thinks about what will be said, while a professional asks, "Who is my audience?".

A teacher in Massachusetts who has spent more than a quarter century in the classroom is drawing attention after she quit her job over her growing frustration with the school system’s emphasis on standardized testing.

Because of “so many things that pulled me away from the classroom and fractured my time with the children,” kindergarten teacher Susan Sluyter quit last month.

“It takes the joy out of learning for the children," she told TODAY. "It takes the joy out of teaching.”

Unfortunately this is the style of learning in China, where my teachers come from. I have been told to take the fun out of the learning to concentrate on giving only useful information. It has taken the joy out of my teaching...or can I be subversive???

Have a very similar mindset but short of opening one's own school we are stuck with it. I have just published a book leading teachers to the more fertile ground for real progress, in literacy acquisition, of analysing student work, giving them an authentic voice, and goal setting. It puts listening and speaking at the centre.

Madelyn Blair’s company name Pelerei represents two root words that mean “lifting people up.” She made up the name as a hidden reminder of who she is and why she is here. Learn more about Madelyn’s books: "Riding the Current" and "Essays in Two Voices".

This is particularly important for leadership -- but also really for anyone in business who wants to maximize their work with business stories and being a compelling storyteller.

There are many qualities I love about Madelyn. She's brilliant and her book Riding the Currentfocuses on how we can stay up to speed in this age of information overload. In particular, she discusses how stories can help us continually engage with learning, and develop wisdom.

She talks about other topics in this interview, too -- like social media and its connection to storytelling. Plus she shares with everyone an activity any group can do to elevate mood, reveal core values, and find/transfer wisdom. Yeah!

Madelyn arrives tomorrow for a visit -- we're taking Bo Eason's storytelling workshop over the weekend, then heading to Los Angeles for meetings and a day-long get together of other biz story professionals. I can't wait to hang out with my buds, get inspired from sharing our work and progress, and be with everyone in person instead of via Skype.

OK -- enjoy this podcast. I know you will and thanks Annette for another great interview!

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